The Fight to Save Andrew Brannan From Execution

The Fight to Save Andrew Brannan From Execution

Posted By
Brockton D. Hunter

On January 12, 1998 a simple traffic stop on an empty Georgia road ended
in a shootout between Andrew Brannan and Sheriff Deputy Kyle Dinkheller.
Deputy Dinkheller stopped Mr. Brannan for driving 100 mph, but Mr. Brannan
quickly became agitated and shot the Deputy nine times, killing him. The
video from the dashboard camera is brutal. Deputy Dinkheller left behind
a wife and young child. Mr. Brannan has been tried and convicted. Now,
his defense attorneys, Brian S. Kammer and L. Joseph Loveland Jr. are
working non-stop to obtain a stay of execution. As of right now, Mr. Brannan
is scheduled to be executed tomorrow, on January 13, 2015 at 7:00pm.

There is more to this story than meets the eye. Mr. Brennan is not the
monster portrayed in the dashboard camera video. In 1968, Andrew Brannan
volunteered for the U.S. Army. He served in Vietnam in 1970 and 1971 as
a Forward Observer in the artillery unit of the 23rd Infantry Division.
Mr. Brannan saw combat, suffering, and death at close range. As a First
Lieutenant he was a critical leader whose job came with intense pressure
and responsibility. Mr. Brannan received two Army Commendation Medals
and a Bronze Star for his service. And, like thousands of his fellow combat
veterans, Mr. Brannan came home with a severe, debilitating mental illness
– Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). When he came home he began
to act and speak bizarrely. He avoided people and eventually moved alone
into a structure he built in the woods near Dublin, Georgia.

There is no question that Mr. Brennan’s combat experience caused
his PTSD. He received a diagnosis of 100% disability due to PTSD from
Veterans Affairs. Borrowing from Minneapolis, Minnesota criminal defense
attorneys Brockton Hunter and Ryan Else’s book,
The Attorney’s Guide to Defending Veterans in Criminal Court, Mr. Kammer and Mr. Loveland Jr. argue in their Petition for Habeas Corpus
that it is unjust to train our soldiers to behave a certain way –
to kill instinctively, to rationalize killing another human, and to become
desensitized to the act – and then execute them for behaving that
way. It is the height of hypocrisy for our government to execute a man
they conditioned to kill. As such, veterans whose combat trauma can reasonably
be tied to their criminal offense should be categorically excluded from
receiving the death penalty, similar to the way we treat juveniles and
the intellectually disabled. One of our attorneys, Joshua London makes
the same argument in a piece he wrote soon to be published titled
Why Are We Killing Veterans? The Repugnance and Incongruity of the U.S.
Government Executing Psychologically Wounded Veterans.

The United States Supreme Court jurisprudence seeks “to ensure that
only the most deserving of execution are put to death. . .“ Atkins
v. Virginia 536 U.S. 304, 319 (2002). Mr. Brannan’s exemplary military
service and his severe and persistent mental illness make him and other
combat veterans, undeserving of the death penalty. We hope the Superior
Court of Butts County Georgia will consider Mr. Kammer and Mr. Loveland’s
argument and who or what was to blame for the Officer Dinkheller’s
unfortunate death.

“The painful paradox is that fighting for one’s country can
render one unfit to be its citizen”